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StarBucks Coffee (Photo credit: Esparta)

There’s no question that has had a tall order in recent years. It’s had to react to the very phenomenon it created in the first place, reassessing and redirecting, made harder by a tumultuous economy. In a sense, Howard Schultz did what Steve Jobs and other great innovators have done, creating something that we didn’t really know we needed until we had it. But Starbucks’s undertaking is actually much larger, and fundamentally different from others’, since it brings us a space rather than a product. Some would say that it fills a psychological need that other companies have not had to do in quite the same way. Whether it’s living up to this unique role is the question.

Physical changes, at least in some Starbucks stores, are palpable, and may reflect bigger changes. In my local Starbucks, for example, a recent renovation brought an army of teeny-weeny tables lined up in formation against the longest wall. Behind them is a lengthy bench, too high to sit comfortably and too wide to rest your back. They’ve amped up the music by adding another speaker. And the new lighting feels fluorescent and cold. The effect of the store renovation is clear: It’s not a comfortable place to sit for very long. “Foot traffic” has clearly increased, but the regulars have scattered. Starbucks Corporate obviously has a lot on its hands, but is this the right direction to go in?

The new “let’s make it slightly uncomfortable” model has a larger effect on the psyches of the customers – those who come to work or to play – than we might think at first. This is because the coffee house plays the central role of “Third Place” in our lives – home being the first and work being the second – and Starbucks has always been vocal about its desire to be this third place for its customer. What’s interesting is that humans actually really need this place, and we’ve needed if for practically our whole existence, according to some.

About 20 years ago, Ray Oldenburg, PhD, who wrote a book called The Great Good Place, argued that there are a number of attributes that make a third place a third place: It has to be convenient, inviting, serve something, and have some good regulars (which, he says, is actually more important than having a good host). People have had third places throughout history, and they’ve ranged from taverns to coffee houses to barbershops. They’re definitely better than street corners. Third places are different from first or second ones because we go to them in our in-between time – their voluntariness is what makes them so special and unique.

Starbucks has succeeded so well at filling this role that it’s become a global third place. And now the company is having to deal with its own heft. To cope, it’s made changes over a number of years – stores seemed to get smaller if more numerous, the smell of breakfast sandwiches replaced the warm aroma of coffee, and espresso machines became mostly automatic. But the newer “slightly uncomfortable” business model of late seems like an especially blatant move, and one that’s not necessarily in a forward direction, at least psychologically speaking.

“Changing the business model from third places to speed lane stops will not change the underlying human psychological need,” says Suzanne Roff, PhD, an industrial psychologist. “The value added to a cup of Starbucks coffee is the safe, unhurried comfortable environment that is not home or the workplace. This has become its brand identification.” If Starbucks continues to standardize its stores and shave down their comforts, its “third placeness” will continue to dissolve, and “urban consumers in particular will lose an informal social network (that emerges without a plan) that is an important antidote to loneliness and isolation…. Those without workplaces may feel more estranged because there will be a sense that there is nowhere to go to feel part of the urban social fabric during the workday.”